Optimising the Animals for the Palearctic and Neoarctic realm

We had a lot of discussions about what to put in either a european dlc or an northamerican dlc, but after thinking about it a bit i figured, that we are mostly missing one big part of the puzzle.
That part being that many animals live in both the neoarctic and the palearctic, making it propaply easier to make a sufficient animal raster for both of them at the same time, each being half of one coin.
For anyone not knowing the words, the neoarctic describes biogeological region of northamerica and the palearctic of northafrica, europe and north of the Himalaya, more or less the northern hemisphere combined.

I made a list, using the meta wishlist as a guideline to mark out some of the most requested animals (all in the top 20) from these regions and how they cross between them.

Most importanly we have in both the Moose, the redfox, the wolverine and a beaver (metawishlist says northamerican, but lets be honest who would actually care which one we get).

For Europe we have the eurasian lynx and the alpine ibex (if we are talking about all of the palearctic also the prezwalski horse, but i doubt they would come in a europe dlc)

For America we have the californian Sealion, the cougar and the american aligator.

If we assume we only get 2 scenery packs, we would cut one of the american only animals (in my opinion the aligator, as the other two are more unique and also more requested) and put 2 from both ecoregions each in the packs.

I would seperate as:

Europe: Redfox (small carnivore, more iconic to europe), Alpine ibex (herbivore), Eurasian beaver (aquatic), Eurasian lynx (small carnivore)
Northamerica: Californian sealion (aquatic), Cougar (large carnivore), Wolverine (midsize carnivore), Moose (herbivore)

Giving both packs a nice mix.
While i would miss myself a red or fallow deer, i think that this setup would maximise the amount of animals for both regions while still pandering to our wishes, allowing us to build much better temperate zones in our zoos, while delivering on some very iconic zoo animals.

But thats only for both scenery packs. As you can see, we left one animal from the top 20 out for northamerica, the aligator and if we scroll down the wishlist till 25 we find exactly 2 more animals from these two realms, the red deer and the muskox, one for each.
If we now reshuffle a bit we have:

Europe: Redfox (small carnivore, more iconic to europe), Alpine ibex (midsize herbivore), Eurasian lynx (small carnivore), Red deer (large herbivore)
Northamerica: Californian sealion (aquatic, mid), Cougar (large carnivore), Wolverine (midsize carnivore), Moose (large herbivore), Northamerican beaver (aquatic, small), american aligator (aquatic, large), Muskox (large herbivore)

All personal preferences and biases ignored, i believe that these 2 packs would overall be the best ways to tackle northamerica and europe. I might not agree with all picks, for example i would swap the aligator for a small animal, something like a racoon or prairedog, but thats my own personal preferences, while these are pure statistics from the meta list.
While the european pack is pretty much more or less what most of the community has agreed one, the northamerica discussions are still all over the place, with many great animals thrown in there as idears, and while that great and all i thought it would be interesting how we could optimise the choices with the statistical we have.

But what do you think about these packs? Would you be happy with them and if not, what would your major criticisms be?
 
Perfect choices! I would be super duper happy, even if i would like to see also the wild boar and the capercaille in the European Dlc, basically two Animal packs for me Frontier please! 😁

Europe:
  • Red Fox
  • Alpine Ibex
  • Wild Boar
  • Red Deer
  • Eurasian Lynx
  • Capercaille
  • Eurasian Badger
  • Fire Salamander
North America:
  • Californian Sea Lion
  • Puma
  • Moose
  • Wolverine
  • North American Beaver
  • Musk Ox
  • American Alligator
  • Axolotl
These are my dream scenarios for both packs.
 
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Maaan, i love the picks ö.ö
I'm always someone who would like to have building pieces, but if we really got these two such well-chosen animal packs, I could do without them.
I don't even know which one I like better.

I hope we will soon get some breadcrumbs for the next DLC, I can hardly take it anymore xD
 
Well done.

Based on the fact that a lot of the species would fit in a Taiga pack, I tried to see, if I could make that work out. It did end up with more packs, but I also got a few more popular choices in as well. I did end up going a bit away from the overall theme of this thread. The Musk Ox didn't make the cut.



Taiga Animal Pack: Redfox, Euroasian Lynx, Red Deer, Wolverine, Moose, North American Beaver, Amur Leopard (+1 Exhibit)
Highland Pack: Alpine Ibex, Puma, (specific species of) Takin, Hamadryas Baboon (+1 Exhibit)
American All-Stars: California Sea Lion, American Alligator, Capybara, Maned Wolf (+1 Exhibit)
 
Well done.

Based on the fact that a lot of the species would fit in a Taiga pack, I tried to see, if I could make that work out. It did end up with more packs, but I also got a few more popular choices in as well. I did end up going a bit away from the overall theme of this thread. The Musk Ox didn't make the cut.



Taiga Animal Pack: Redfox, Euroasian Lynx, Red Deer, Wolverine, Moose, North American Beaver, Amur Leopard (+1 Exhibit)
Highland Pack: Alpine Ibex, Puma, (specific species of) Takin, Hamadryas Baboon (+1 Exhibit)
American All-Stars: California Sea Lion, American Alligator, Capybara, Maned Wolf (+1 Exhibit)
I honestly love the highland pack. That one would be amazing to have
 
May i ask why? I dont see any signifikant difference between the two, but im allways open to be proven wrong.
Also i chose the european, so that each pack would include an aquatic animal and not one 2 and one none
Nothing more than bias as an American. But even outside of the US and Canada I'm pretty sure the American beaver is more common in zoos.

Anyway, I posted my preferred North American wishlist here, so here's my idea for a Eurasian Animal Pack, which would include both European animals and those of the broader Eurasian steppe:

Alpine ibex
Fallow deer
Eurasian lynx
Takin (any subspecies)
Amur leopard
Przewalski's horse
Lammergeier (apparently they and the Egyptian vulture are often kept outside aviaries? if not this then the wolverine, which I'm personally not sure about because of its relative rarity in captivity)
Sheltopusik (exhibit)
 
Europe: Redfox (small carnivore, more iconic to europe), Alpine ibex (midsize herbivore), Eurasian lynx (small carnivore), Red deer (large herbivore)
Northamerica: Californian sealion (aquatic, mid), Cougar (large carnivore), Wolverine (midsize carnivore), Moose (large herbivore), Northamerican beaver (aquatic, small), american aligator (aquatic, large), Muskox (large herbivore)
I think this is right on the money as far as the setup that would please the most people, but as it stands I'm inclined to take the pessimistic approach and expect two scenery packs. I also can't shake the thought that we'll end up with something that relatively few people were requesting, mainly the coyote, in a North American pack.

Getting a bit off topic here, but... I think the coyote provides an important reminder that NA in particular doesn't strictly run from temperate to tundra, and it does in fact have substantial desert regions as well. It's always particularly bugged me that we've got several neat cacti in the game, yet literally not a single animal that gets both the North America and desert tags. This isn't strictly a NA problem, of course. Even with the great additions of the meerkat and fennec we're still lacking in desert species worldwide. But specifically to be able to take advantage of those great cactus models I think it's very worthwhile to consider leaving room in any NA lineup for the collared peccary, ringtail, or perhaps the black-tailed prairie dog. Even the coyote itself wouldn't be the worst choice in this regard. Maybe the cougar will be lucky enough to get the desert tag (assuming they don't restrict it to just the Florida panther...)

Anyway here's my personal, 100% biased lists:

  1. Cougar
  2. California sea lion
  3. American alligator
  4. North American river otter
  5. Collared peccary
  6. White-nosed coatimundi
  7. Moose or North American beaver (I don't care about either of these, personally, but I know a lot of people do)
  8. Axolotl or hellbender

  1. Red fox
  2. Alpine ibex
  3. Iberian/Eurasian lynx
  4. Red deer
  5. Wolverine
  6. Wild boar
  7. Eurasian badger I guess (no strong preference for the last slot)
  8. Fire salamander
 
I really like @KönigDerKaffeebohnen 's choices - selfishly though. the North American line up of Cougar/Moose/Wolverine/Sea Lion has always been my ideal line up for that region since the Aquatic pack came out and opened up the possibility for Sea Lions.

The European pack I'm less aligned with but it's still a good fit. Personally would miss the European Badger but I think the most important inclusions would need to at least have an Eurasian or Iberian Lynx and Alpine Ibex - that's assuming of course that the Moose is covered by North America. It goes without saying if it's not in that pack, it absolutely needs to be in the European pack.
 
Buds, there is something I really don't understand.
Maybe that's a bit OT here now, too.
I really don't understand why Frontier doesn't just take 5 euros more per pack, but we have scenery items and more animals for it. Honestly? What are 5 euros, please? When I go to eat my veggie burger I pay more than 15 euros and I eat it and ... well you already know what happens then. I do not understand it.
And everyone would be happy after all, wouldn't they?
7 + 1 animals and scenery items for 15 euros ...
I hope they learn from it and things will go better for PZ2.

I would love to see the Jackrabbit in the NA Pack. A Hare for the game would be really cool. I fell in love with them. But I think I'm pretty much alone with that xD
I hope we get a beaver. I don't really care in which pack. It's a completely different kind of animal and I think the game would really benefit from it.
And please no coyote xD
 
We had a lot of discussions about what to put in either a european dlc or an northamerican dlc, but after thinking about it a bit i figured, that we are mostly missing one big part of the puzzle.
That part being that many animals live in both the neoarctic and the palearctic, making it propaply easier to make a sufficient animal raster for both of them at the same time, each being half of one coin.
For anyone not knowing the words, the neoarctic describes biogeological region of northamerica and the palearctic of northafrica, europe and north of the Himalaya, more or less the northern hemisphere combined.

I made a list, using the meta wishlist as a guideline to mark out some of the most requested animals (all in the top 20) from these regions and how they cross between them.

Most importanly we have in both the Moose, the redfox, the wolverine and a beaver (metawishlist says northamerican, but lets be honest who would actually care which one we get).

For Europe we have the eurasian lynx and the alpine ibex (if we are talking about all of the palearctic also the prezwalski horse, but i doubt they would come in a europe dlc)

For America we have the californian Sealion, the cougar and the american aligator.

If we assume we only get 2 scenery packs, we would cut one of the american only animals (in my opinion the aligator, as the other two are more unique and also more requested) and put 2 from both ecoregions each in the packs.

I would seperate as:

Europe: Redfox (small carnivore, more iconic to europe), Alpine ibex (herbivore), Eurasian beaver (aquatic), Eurasian lynx (small carnivore)
Northamerica: Californian sealion (aquatic), Cougar (large carnivore), Wolverine (midsize carnivore), Moose (herbivore)

Giving both packs a nice mix.
While i would miss myself a red or fallow deer, i think that this setup would maximise the amount of animals for both regions while still pandering to our wishes, allowing us to build much better temperate zones in our zoos, while delivering on some very iconic zoo animals.

But thats only for both scenery packs. As you can see, we left one animal from the top 20 out for northamerica, the aligator and if we scroll down the wishlist till 25 we find exactly 2 more animals from these two realms, the red deer and the muskox, one for each.
If we now reshuffle a bit we have:

Europe: Redfox (small carnivore, more iconic to europe), Alpine ibex (midsize herbivore), Eurasian lynx (small carnivore), Red deer (large herbivore)
Northamerica: Californian sealion (aquatic, mid), Cougar (large carnivore), Wolverine (midsize carnivore), Moose (large herbivore), Northamerican beaver (aquatic, small), american aligator (aquatic, large), Muskox (large herbivore)

All personal preferences and biases ignored, i believe that these 2 packs would overall be the best ways to tackle northamerica and europe. I might not agree with all picks, for example i would swap the aligator for a small animal, something like a racoon or prairedog, but thats my own personal preferences, while these are pure statistics from the meta list.
While the european pack is pretty much more or less what most of the community has agreed one, the northamerica discussions are still all over the place, with many great animals thrown in there as idears, and while that great and all i thought it would be interesting how we could optimise the choices with the statistical we have.

But what do you think about these packs? Would you be happy with them and if not, what would your major criticisms
I think NA should also give soe representation to Mexico, especially with an animal pack. I'd go with a Peccary I think instead of a musk ox, especially with muxk oxen not actually being found in zoos.
 
I'd go with a Peccary I think instead of a musk ox, especially with muxk oxen not actually being found in zoos.
Musk oxen are found in zoos. Actually my local zoo has both collared peccaries and musk oxen, so I'd be happy if we got any of those two animals in any case :)
 
Musk oxen are found in zoos. Actually my local zoo has both collared peccaries and musk oxen, so I'd be happy if we got any of those two animals in any case :)
Checked and you're correct. Apparently I searched for the wrong entry in zootierliste
 
Nothing more than bias as an American. But even outside of the US and Canada I'm pretty sure the American beaver is more common in zoos.

Anyway, I posted my preferred North American wishlist here, so here's my idea for a Eurasian Animal Pack, which would include both European animals and those of the broader Eurasian steppe:

Alpine ibex
Fallow deer
Eurasian lynx
Takin (any subspecies)
Amur leopard
Przewalski's horse
Lammergeier (apparently they and the Egyptian vulture are often kept outside aviaries? if not this then the wolverine, which I'm personally not sure about because of its relative rarity in captivity)
Sheltopusik (exhibit)
Thought about this more and decided we could use two packs for this.

European Pack:
Fallow deer
Wolverine
Iberian lynx
Lammergeier (aviary but comes after the bird/aviary pack)
European fire-bellied toad (exhibit)

Eurasian/Central Asian Pack (not sure about an ideal name):
Amur leopard
Przewalski's horse
Takin
Pallas's cat
Raccoon dog
Asian small-clawed otter
Golden pheasant
Sheltopusik (exhibit)
 
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